Teens may have cooled on Facebook, but investors haven’t

Tags:

As Reuters reports, Facebook’s stock was up as much as 15% in extended trading yesterday, despite some worrying new information about the site’s popularity. Facebook’s daily usage in the US has plateaued of late, and the company’s CFO said yesterday that young teens aren’t flocking to the site at the rate they once were:

The company reported better-than-expected results on Wednesday, helped by strong advertising revenue. But Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman later said there had been a decrease in daily users, specifically among younger teens.

Ebersman also said the company would not boost the frequency of ads — one per 20 stories in the newsfeed — shown to users.

As FastFT notes, more than a dozen investment banks raised their price targets on Facebook after their earnings release yesterday. Christopher Mims writes that Facebook’s ad sales growth was strong enough to overcome worries about the effectiveness of Facebook’s ads. Lydia DePillis points to this chart from the earnings release: US users are six or seven times more valuable to Facebook at this point than users in Asia or Latin America.

Jim Edwards of Business Insider argues that Facebook increasingly becoming a mobile product, not a desktop product. 49% of the company’s ad revenue now comes from mobile, the NYT writes, up from 41% the previous quarter. “Perhaps Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, should ditch the hoodie and dress up as a mobile phone for Halloween.”